


One Last Job

by Demmora



Category: Dishonored
Genre: canon depictions of violence, cyborg Billie Lurk, high chaos I guess, meta and theorizing, old man Daud, sad whale god, spoilers for the new game, the death of the outsider, when the last leviathan is gone darkness will fall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 04:01:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11222895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demmora/pseuds/Demmora
Summary: How long had it been? Ten years? Twelve?"Fifteen." The Outsider replies, head tilting to the side as he regards Daud with dark fathomless eyes. "But sometimes it feels like only tomorrow."





	One Last Job

He always knew it would end in violence. But even he's surprised by this.

"That's a lot of men," Daud says dryly, taking a drag from his cigar,"for one old man."

They've got him surrounded now, a petty group of thugs, no more than a dozen men. All muscle, no finesse, and not a single brain between them. _And yet_ , Daud thinks, _they caught up to you_.  _I'm too old for this shit._

"Shut up," the man in the lead growls, and Daud snorts with laughter, blowing smoke through his nose.

"What's it to be boys," Daud asks, dropping his cigar and crumbling it under the toe of his boot, "twelve on one? Or did one of you unlucky bastards draw the short straw?"

The thug tilts his jaw up, hefting his cleaver in what is likely meant to be a menacing gesture. But none of them have moved yet. True they've fanned out around him, relying on intimidation by numbers—like hunters trying to drive their prey to ground. But even old wolves still have claws, and when he smiles he can see the fear in their eyes. 

The Whalers would have run rings around them for fun back in the day, cutting them to ribbons in the blink of an eye and making them scream for their mothers. But the Whalers aren't here now, they belong to another life, another time. A time when Daud was younger, quicker—a time when the only person to walk out of this room would have been him. He still could, he knows. He can feel the pull of the Void, the tingle in his fingers, the dormant power quickening his heart, trickling down his spine, defying age,  _boiling his blood...echoing through his skull_ _..._

"Nah," the leader says, mouth crooking up into a broken toothed feral grin, "the Boss wants you alive. For now."

He hears the click of the wristbow bolt behind him, half turning in time to feel the dart piercing the tender flesh of his neck, feels the heat encroaching down his neck as the sleep dart—tainted with impurities and cut with junk from the streets of Karnaca—burns through his veins and quickens his heart as his body fights the impending paralysis even as his brain begins to slow, his vision turning dark.

The last thing he remembers is the floor rushing up to meet him—and the mark burning bright and hot on the back of his hand.

 

***

 

Daud blinks, then blinks again because he's not entirely sure he'd opened his eyes the first time. He reaches up, feeling for the blindfold which must surely be there but feeling only his own face, eyelashes flickering against his skin as he blinks again.

"Daud, my old friend..."

"Aw, fuck me."

The Outsider smiles in the dim purple light beginning to suffuse the darkness. "It's been a while."

"Not long enough," Daud thinks, forgetting all too quickly that no thought is voiceless here. Fuck. How long had it been? Ten years? Twelve?

"Fifteen." The Outsider replies, head tilting to the side as he regards Daud with dark, fathomless eyes. "But sometimes it feels like only tomorrow."

Fifteen years, fifteen years since he'd last visited a shrine...fifteen years since Attano had spared his life. And Daud still wonders why... _why is everything so dark..._

He looks around, squinting to try and see beyond the dim glow of the Outsider's presence. But there's nothing there, no lights, no floating ruins, no...

"They dragged her from the sea." The Outsider says, tone melancholic and dreamy, voice fluctuating strangely in the overwhelming silence of the Void. There is no whale song here. No ruins, no visions, no memories. Only darkness. "The last of her kind. And when she bled no more they hollowed out her flesh, and carved trinkets from her bones..."

"Tell me, Daud." When he looks up, Daud can see human sorrow in his eyes. "How would you kill a god?"

 

***

 

She moves like oil over the top of water, slick and iridescent, flowing from one form to the next. The henchman barely has time to raise his cleaver before her sword connects, the force of the Void slicing him neatly from head to toe. His comrade barely has enough time to register his own fear before Billie turns her pistol on him, blowing his brains out and splattering them across the wall where the epitaph "there's only one way out of this world" foretells the death of everyone in this building. Except one.

She spies the suit wearing noble again, flows behind a wall and waits for her time to strike. She doesn't use the Void for this one. This one deserves the force of  _her_ fury.

All the while she can feel him near, the tug of their old bond—lost when she'd been severed from him all those years ago—rekindled by the sliver of jewel embedded in her eye. She can feel it inching further inward, a fraction of a hair every day, heralding the moment when it will reach her brain and sever her connection from this world entirely. But it is not this day. Nor the next. He'd promised her, the black eyed bastard with the iron scent of the sea and sorrow in his bones. He'd promised she'd have enough time to do what needed to be done.

The door is locked, but a locked door has never stopped Billie Lurk.

She takes her time opening it, nothing left to hurry her now that the building is clear, but also not knowing what she will find within. She used to think he filled the world, his power her lifeline to an existence beyond her own, a wealth of knowledge and ruthless cruelty she'd come to know so well...and even when she'd betrayed him he'd managed to surprise her. Perhaps he'd even surprised himself.

She steps inside, back straight, footsteps bold.

 _Show no fear,_ he'd said, drilling the lesson into her over and over again as he lunged with blade and fist, tripping her over and over until she was quick enough to dodge out the way,  _show no fear and move like death._

"Daud..." his head jerks up, head turning toward her voice, "it's good to see you old man."

He doesn't seem surprised to see her, and for a split second she wonders if the Outsider told him she was coming.

"You up for one last job, Billie?"

"Who's the mark?" she asks even though she knows the answer, the old words spilling from her lips as though the last fifteen years were just a dream and Dunwall not another world away. 

"The black eyed bastard responsible for all the chaos."

Freed from his cuffs Daud takes a moment to work the feeling back into his hands, rubbing at the chafe marks around his wrists. He looks old. Older than she ever could have imagined considering their line of work. She'd like to say he wears it well, but his life is written heavily on his face, both literally and otherwise from the deep grooves that have worked themselves around his eyes, to the scars, some old and new that detail the kind of life he has lead. Billie has always been intimately familiar with her own mortality, but somehow seeing him like this makes it all the more tangible, like a ship looming on the suddenly not so distant horizon. Briefly she wonders what he sees in her, what conclusions he draws from the gouge mark over her eye—mirroring his own—and the withered gnarl of flesh where her arm used to be. She banishes it, immediately, nodding in agreement as she reaches out with her prosthetic arm, hands clasped as they seal the pact, united by a common goal again.

"We're going to kill the Outsider."

 


End file.
